What counts as Spoilers?

The lovely ruthct21 commented on a post of mine yesterday (more in sorrow than in anger, I think) that she was going to have to avoid reading my stuff if I wasn't more careful about spoilers for Doctor Who, as she's somewhere in South America and hasn't seen the new episode yet. This came as something of a surprise to me, because I thought I had been pretty careful about spoilers when posting about Doctor Who... But then it occurred to me that Ruth and I might have very different definitions of what constitutes a spoiler. SO:

What about "a character called x appeared who spoke to $regular character" where x is not a regular, and you don't give any further information? Cos I mentioned that there was a character called Heather in The Pilot, although I didn't give any further information than her name...

I think that's fine, and I think there has to be an expectation that any discussion of an episode beyond 'like/dislike' is going to contain some discussion of things that happened. The line for me is somewhere between 'X's performance as Y was good' and 'X's performance as Y was good, especially when they became the monster of the week', or the difference between describing Derek Jacobi as playing Professor Yana and Derek Jacobi playing the Master.

Except if a trailer tells you the ending it's a very clear sign it's a really bad film, I don't recall ever seeing a trailer for anything actually good that in any way revealed major plot points or twists, let alone an ending.

I agree with pseudomonas that mere character names can need spoiler cutting if it is the surprise reappearance of a previously established character. (Even if they've been in trailers, because some people are so spoiler-phobic that they try to avoid official trailers.)

Yes, that's true. There would be a big difference between "Luke Skywalker is going to appear in The Last Jedi" and "Obi Wan Kenobi is going to appear in The Last Jedi" (but the last assertion is not actually a spoiler because I just made it up.

By contrast, I thought it was unfair a couple of years ago when a person on my reading list got yelled at by somebody for mentioning the name of a well-known actor who was a guest cast member, who had never appeared on Who before and was playing a single-episode character of no continuity relevance.

There was always a rush to hit 'Stop' on Dr Who before they did the "in the next episode" trailer, which would almost always reveal major plot elements of the next episode. In some cases, knowing what the monster-of-the-week is will actually be a spoiler - e.g. if they're a 'villain-behind-the-curtain' - putting their existence in a trailer or discussion will pretty much negate the "wonder who the villain is" sense of wonder.

My partner always avoids trailers, discussion of episodes, etc - she wants to see each episode tabula rasa, so as to discover it second-by-second. Much like when you're reading a book, and discover the plot word-by-word. (Books that reveal major plot points in the back cover copy are bloody annoying, too.)(Except if it stars Liam Neeson, and bad things happen to him, because, especially in Next Of Kin, he looks like her husband did when they met. Also, if bad things happen to animals.)

Yeah, I want it flagged if a story is rapey or if bad things happen to doggies because of my personal squicks.

I know other people who stop the episode before the next time trailer, and one of my favourite Who podcasts has a one-minute audio "curtain" before they discuss the next time trailer to let people stop the podcast.

Usually I would not consider all of these spoilers, but there's certainly circumstances under which they could be. Times like someone who is known to be a fan of a particular character who is supposed to be dead mentions how amazing and surprising and great this episode was!

I think that certainly *could* be a spoiler, but doesn't have to be.For me, at least, the concept of spoilers only really works for certain kinds of entertainment -- ones where the plot is the main appeal, and where that plot is predicated on a surprise twist somewhere.To take two murder mystery examples, it would be *very* easy to spoiler The Murder of Roger Ackroyd -- so much so that it would be impossible to discuss anything at all about the book sensibly. On the other hand, you could recount every event in The Name of the Rose and not, I think, spoil the story one iota -- the pleasure from that comes almost entirely from the way the story's told, not from the events that happen in it. Personally, I take the attitude that very few things can really be spoiled -- I like the way in which old books and plays were called things like "The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates."I think it really does have to be on a case-by-case basis though. I've told people who want to read Philip Purser-Hallard's Devices books not even to learn the *title* of the second book until they've read the first, because it's a massive spoiler for a genuinely amazing twist half-way through the first book...

I ticked the ones that I am reasonably sure count as spoilers; things like "specific plot points" depend both on what the specific plot points are, and the context. "A major character is murdered" is likely to be a spoiler—but not if the character in question is the president of the United States and the episode is set in November 1963.

Most spoilers are about the destination not the journey. The journey is the thing which keeps me entertained.A blow by blow recap of an episode may ruin the journey but then again its not the actual actors doing it.

That's basically my take: I enjoy Columbo despite knowing who did it, I can happily rewatch or reread a mystery novel I know backwards, and generally you know the lead cast will survive the Moment Of Extreme Peril before an ad break but the how is entertaining.

I have sometimes skipped to the end of books I'm not sure I want to finish, found that the ending is interesting and gone back to find out how they got there: I've also just given up entirely on a book because the ending was even more dull than the first few chapters, I'm fine with that.

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Hello! I'm Jennie (known to many as SB, due to my handle, or The Yorksher Gob because of my old blog's name). This blog is my public face; click here for a list of all the other places you can find me on t'interwebs.

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